Soothing Lies
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Ellie and Craig in season 6.


If I could go back to this earlier time, if I could go back to grade 10, when I had some sense of things. I was making coffee in the kitchen, this big kitchen in this big house that me and Marco and Dylan were renting. It was Marco's mom's old coffee pot, everything here was second hand and almost thrown out and salvaged from some destruction. Yeah. I wished I could go back a few years when I had things together. I had ways to cope then that I don't have anymore. When things got to be too much I could just cut through my skin and veins and sinews and let it out.

Craig was sleeping upstairs and I was in love with him. How fucked up was that? Of course I loved him and I wanted him to kiss me and make love to me, and in grade 10 I wasn't even attracted to him. All I thought about him was what a jerk he'd been to Ashley and what in the hell did Ashley see in him? So I was making him coffee and I just wanted to see him, talk to him, touch him, before he was gone again.

I didn't have class today until 10 so I had plenty of time. I could make the coffee, make some breakfast, talk to Craig for awhile and then get ready. Group tonight. I still needed it. Maybe now more than ever.

"Hey, Ellie," Marco said, shuffling into the kitchen. He looked so warm and sleepy and rumpled in the morning, his hair sticking up in spikes like a little bird. He sat at the table and looked longingly at the coffee brewing in his mom's old coffee pot.

"It'll be ready in a minute," I said , and then it made that alarm clock noise alerting you that it's ready. I poured him a cup and handed it over so he could dump his twenty cups of sugar into it. He smiled and wrapped his hand around the mug.

"Thanks, Elle," he said. I nodded at him and poured myself a cup, and poured Craig a cup.

"Who's that for?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow as he watched me leave the kitchen so carefully with my two mugs of coffee.

"Who do you think?" I said.

"Oh no. Ellie, not Craig? He, Ellie, he's seeing Manny-"

"Marco! It's just coffee, it's not an engagement ring!"

He shrugged, like he knew different, and sipped his sugar and coffee. I continued on my way. Okay, Marco had a point. But I couldn't concede it that easily. I was almost to the stairs when Manny rushed by me, looking a little haggard for such a beautiful girl. She said she was late, and I moved aside as she ran past and out the door. Ah, the early hours of high school. I had to say I didn't miss that.

Up the stairs and down the long hall to the spare room we'd let Craig stay in. I pushed on the door and realized I'd hardly seen him like this, just waking up. Despite the summer we spent together things had never been this intimate. He didn't have his shirt on and I stared at the muscles and bones of his back and chest. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked up at me, sniffling, grabbing for the box of tissues.

"Good morning," I said, and handed him the coffee. He reached for it slowly and thanked me. I wanted to stay, wanted to sit beside him and touch his skin with the palm of my hand and the tips of my fingers, wanted to touch his hair and feel his breath against my ear. But Marco was right. He was seeing Manny. So I just watched him sip his coffee and rub his nose and he looked awfully tired. But from that summer I knew how his meds messed with him, making him overly tired sometimes.

So I would go. Yes. I had to get ready for class anyway, but on my way out I saw it, the little baggie of drugs. Powdery and white like a sugar donut or flour. Cocaine. I picked it up and looked at him. And in that first look I saw all I needed to see, I saw the guilt and unease and all of that, the truth. But I was a girl who hungered for the soothing lies people would tell me.

"Craig? What is this?"

He took a breath and looked at me with those large eyes, parted his lips a bit. I felt dizzy with this lust, this desire. Well, it was out of my reach. He was out of my reach.

"I never thought it would get this bad so fast," he said, and I groped for his meaning. What was bad? Drugs? Or was it me?

"What? What's bad? Craig, are you doing coke?" I said, and held the little baggy of it between my fingers.

"No," he said, "Manny is,"


End file.
